"God be merciful to us & bless us, & cause His face to shine upon us. That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Oh, let the nations be glad & sing for joy!"

Monday, August 4, 2014

Revival and Reformation Pt 16

Thank you, Lord God, that your
Scriptures have been preserved through fire, decay, destruction, and time.
Thank you that though nations and nasty people have tried to erase your holy
Word it still remains long after they have vanished. So Lord, help us to not
only appreciate the Scriptures – as at a distance, but this very day to be
touched by your Book for our good and your honor, through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

What is the desire of your heart?
What exactly do you seek and search for with all of your life energies? To
answer these two questions is to show where your loyalties lie… Henry Scougal
once said: “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the
object of its love” (“The Life of God in the Soul of Man,” 62). This is
what the Spirit-directed editors of 1 and 2 Chronicles are trying to press home
on God’s people throughout the ages as they relate these historical events. Their
desire was for the church to be reformed by realigning her loyalties, to
readjust the “object” of her “love,” by coming under the Reforming Word of
Yahweh.

A.
The principle – v. 2: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of
you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today,"
that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews
3.12-13).

Seeking the LORD – 14.2-5, & 7;
15.12-18. This is the
key phrase describing Asa and his reforming heart and reforming action, “he
Sought Yahweh.” It’s used something like 8 times in chapter 14-15. Not
just personal or private, but also corporate and household.

{1} To turn toward Yahweh – changing
allegiances – a turning away from evil: 14.4. “For thus says the LORD
to the house of Israel: "Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4). “Seek the Lord while He may
be found, Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And
the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, And He will have
mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:6-7).

{2} Removing all idolizing distractions
(discarding all competitors – no matter the family connections!). “If anyone
comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children
and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple”

(Luke 14:26-27).

{3} Genuine prayer. “Then you will
call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and
find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer.29:12-13).

{4} No room for a half-hearted
puttering search for God. We must dive in like we would in a good marriage:
with wholehearted eagerness (2 Chron.
15.15). In other words, it’s the Norm of Loyalties – 14.2, 15.2, 17 and
16.9“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it
profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man
give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in
this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be
ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:34-38).

And this is where “Decent people”
go astray. In their minds, decent people don’t really do anything to get their
god angry with them, because they’re – well – really just decent, clean-cut,
upstanding, no ring-around-the-collar, no-dirt-behind-the-ears kind of people. And
in their perception, God-as-they-understand-him/it couldn’t dare get mad at
decent people? Right?! But friends, it’s a matter of loyalties. Where is your
heart? As a decent fellow, if I’m married, but my heart isn’t wholly with my
wife (having crossed my fingers during my wedding vows) – you would call me
(rightly) what: an adulterer, but for sure a scallywag and a scoundrel. As a
decent guy, if I’m in the military but not loyal to my country, what would you
call me? Traitor, turncoat or defector, right?! As a decent man, if I’m not singularly
loyal to Holy God, what does that make me? Tolerant, open-minded, charitable, sensible;
right? No, I’m breaking faith – or as James puts it when writing to
faith-breaking believers: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that
friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a
friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

Seek the Lord, my friends; seek the
Lord whole hog! “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the
object of its love” (“The Life of God in the Soul of Man,” 62).

{5} But ultimately, you are seeking him
who has first sought out you: Parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin. Or
something St. Augustine once wrote in his Confessions (11.2) that through
Christ, “you sought us when we were not seeking you, but sought us that we
might seek you.” Also, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but
that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins…We love
Him because He first loved us." 1 John 4:10 & 19